I am pointing out that in my opinion they do not provide a civilization that can stand without the support of the ideals that come from the classics.
Calvin Coolidge
The Public Record
Calvin Coolidge was the 30th President of the United States, serving from 1923 to 1929. A member of the Republican Party, he was known for his quiet demeanor and strong support for business and limited government. Coolidge's presidency is often associated with the economic prosperity of the Roaring Twenties, and he famously advocated for a hands-off approach to the economy, believing that government should interfere as little as possible in the lives of citizens and businesses.
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They give not only power to the intellect, but direct its course of action.
The revival of learning was the revival of Athens and Sparta and of the Imperial City.
The philosophy of Plato and Aristotle and the Greek and Latin classics were the foundation of the Renaissance.
The orations of Demosthenes and Cicero are pitched in the same high strain.
Their poets sang of the glory of dying for one's native land.
Their heroes were those who sacrificed themselves for their country, from the three hundred at Thermopylæ to Horatius at the bridge.
No; they were defending their ideals, and those ideals came from the classics.
Give a savage tribe firearms and a distillery, and their members will exterminate each other.
It must minister to the whole man or it fails.
Education must give not only power but direction.
If society lacks learning and virtue, it perishes.
Broadly speaking, the college is not to educate the individual, but to educate society.
If knowledge be wrongfully used, civilization commits suicide.
Civilization depends not only upon the knowledge of the people, but upon the use they make of it.
In this so-called practical age Amherst has chosen for her province the most practical of all,--the culture and the classics of all time.
As a teaching force, as an inspirer of youth, for training men how to think, that faculty has had and will have nowhere any superior.
He who lives under it and is disloyal to it is a traitor to the human race everywhere.
He who lives under it and is loyal to it is loyal to truth and justice everywhere.
Speaking with their voice it has the sanctity of revelation.
Alone of all flags it expresses the sovereignty of the people which endures when all else passes away.
It was never flaunted for the glory of royalty, but to be born under it is to be a child of a king, and to establish a home under it is to be the founder of a royal house.
The flags of the great empires of that day are gone, but the Stars and Stripes remain.
When the people of the Colonies were defending their liberties against the might of kings, they chose their banner from the design set in the firmament through all eternity.
The humble walk hand in hand with Providence to immortality.
Politicians like Calvin Coolidge
